BLOGSCAN - Electronic Health Records: Should Congress “Defund” the Stampede to Convert to EHRs? No, But . . .

Maggie Mahar over at HealthBeat Blog has written a piece on Jan. 31, 2011 entitled "Electronic Health Records: Should Congress “Defund” the Stampede to Convert to EHRs? No, But . . ."

It cites my Jan. 28, 2011 HC Renewal post "US House of Representatives Proposes to Defund Largest Non-Consented Medical Experiment in U.S. History: HITECH."

She points out something quite interesting about the HIT market from an economic perspective (emphasis in the original):

... I am hardly an IT expert. But I have spent enough years observing markets—stock markets, real estate markets, and most recently, our health care market—to recognize a big, bright Bubble when I see one. Eager to take advantage of fat federal subsidies, too many buyers, with too little information, are scrambling to purchase health IT. And, as is always the case, too many sellers are all too eager to satisfy the buyer’s desire to part with his money....

... The more I think about it, the more I am reminded me of the bull market of the 1990s. Then, as now, neither buyers nor the analysts, brokers and financial planners who sold them stocks possessed the knowledge that they needed. “Momentum” was all as the pace of investing quickened. As for the “collateral damage”—our economy is still recovering from the 1990s.

I hope the medical world will not find itself recovering from the "collateral damage" that too-soon, frantic adoption of not-ready-for-prime-time health IT can cause.

The health IT bubble

-- SS